[comp.sys.hp] Starbase and a z-meshes

danner@cs.cmu.edu (Daniel Stodolsky) (04/29/89)

I'm doing some landscape rendering. From our database, we have a 4800 by 6000
point grid of colors and elevation.  Currently this is rendedered in perspective
on our 835 Turbo SRX using the triangular_strip routine. (We average down the
grid to 1000 x 1200 so it will fit in memory).  This means each vertex has to be
feed to starbase twice. It takes nearly 1 minute per image. I'll be doing this a
lot - we're making a movie.

What I'd really like it a routine which would take a rectangular mesh in which I
only need to specify the color and elevation at each point. Anyone out there
have a suggestion for doing this, or anything else that would speed the process
up? the time command reports 100% CPU utilization, but I can't believe this
isn't graphics box limited.

Is there any support for user written microcode for the graphics accelerators?


Dan Stodolsky
Visualization
Engr. Design Research Center
danner@edrc